Are We Branding Whistleblowers Traitors for Political Reasons?

Op-ed by Derek Khanna

Recently Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years, Edward Snowden has been indicted, and Wikileaks is the focus of a movie called the Fifth Estate. All of this lends itself to a conversation on whether those who leak information are whistleblowers or traitors.

When are leakers branded as traitors, and when do they get a pass?

It's often the case that when information is leaked that makes the Administration and intelligence community look bad, then the leaker is immediately called a traitor. But when the leak causes irreparable harm to US national security, too often those leaks are almost ignored by the popular media.

Leaks that attract public attention usually present information that is important for Americans to know, involving serious public policy questions. As a democratic republic, the United States has always struggled with protecting national security while being transparent and open to the political process.

In some of the most famous leak cases, the leaks caused political damage but it was unclear if they were actually dangerous to national security. In these cases, some political operatives immediately branded the leakers as traitors.

In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg released a 7,000 page document on the Pentagon's internal history of the Vietnam war (a document which he generated) and a document which has clear public policy implications for Americans to know about in the wake of an ongoing war - which is to say that the documents demonstrated how policy-makers were very clearly misleading the American public on the Vietnam War for the previous decade - rather than the documents really providing actionable information for our enemies to use. The fact that it couldn't be proven to cause serious harm was one of the main reasons why the Supreme Court ultimately allowed the New York Times to publish these materials. But it was embarrassing and made the administration look extremely bad. At the time many called Ellsberg a traitor and the Nixon Administration launched a personal vendetta against him.

This excerpt is by Egil Krogh, head of the Special Investigation Unit:

President Nixon had told me he viewed the leak as a matter of critical importance to national security. He ordered me and the others, a group that would come to be called the "plumbers," to find out how the leak had happened and keep it from happening again. Mr. Hunt urged us to carry out a 'covert operation' to get a 'mother lode' of information about Mr. Ellsberg's mental state, to discredit him, by breaking into the office of his psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding.

Ultimately the government bungled the case such that the charges against Ellsberg had to be dropped.

In 2005, the New York Times published a story on the NSA's warrantless surveillance program under Bush. At the time many Republicans called those at the New York Times traitors and some called for prosecutions. President Bush sought an injunction to stop publication, which led the Times to publish early. Those revelations had clear public policy implications, and led to the passage of the FISA legislation with the goal of reigning in warrantless surveillance through the FISA warrant system.

In 2010, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning released over half a million classified US diplomatic cables, war logs from Afghanistan and Iraq and files on Guantánamo detainees. Some of the documents may have harmed US national security. But the other effect of the leaks was to embarrass US officials, as the leaked documents showed how poorly Afghanistan is really proceeding on the ground, how policy-makers were essentially lying about the credibility of our allies like Karzai. Perhaps most shockingly, a leaked video showed what appeared to be a cover-up of a helicopter gunning down a group of civilians including a journalist.

In the Manning case, these revelations had implications for public policy. Some wonder if it isn't a coincidence that Manning was arrested and vilified as a traitor and charged with 22 offenses, including aiding the enemy, and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Did Manning's leaks harm US national security? It's debatable.

In the case of Manning's leaks to WikiLeaks, attempts were made to conceal the identity of US informants. However, the leaks ultimately provided the identity of some informants, and some have argued that it "put people in danger." Army Chief of Staff Mike Mullen has directly stated that Manning and Julian Assange "might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier..."

However, Brig. Gen. Robert Carr, who was in charge of responding to Manning's leaks, has testified that no informants were killed as a result of Manning's leaks.

Like Manning, Assange has been vilified and called a traitor by some policy-makers for the crime of releasing Manning's leaked documents. Or potentially for the crime of inducing Manning to procure the documents (which has never been proven).

In the case of WikiLeaks and the Pentagon Papers, the actual harm to US national security or ongoing operations is attenuated. It may be true that the Wikileaks-disseminated cables and video indirectly harmed US national security, for instance through the un-redacted names of informants.

In other notable leaks, the harm from leaks is much greater. In the following leaks the actual harm was real, tangible and likely put us in danger.

Leaks That Caused Sever Harm to National Security

In 2012, the Associated Press's reports on an Al Qaeda bomb plot exposed not only that the US had thwarted the plot BUT ALSO that we had custody of the bomb at Quantico...AND AP also revealed that the US had infiltrated the terror group with a human source operating within Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

This type of source is essentially the holy grail of HUMINT (Human Intelligence) - a source inside an enemy organization. In this case he had been recruited by Al Qaeda to be the suicide bomber.

The Obama administration therefore considered the leak exposing him to be one of the most dangerous leaks to US national security. CIA Director John Brennan has called the leak "irresponsible and damaging," while Attorney General Eric Holder said the story was the result of "a very serious leak, a very grave leak."

So much so, that they sought and obtained court warrants for two months of call records of 20 reporters who were working on that story for the Associated Press.

LA Timesreported the story as "Saudi-born Briton had gained the trust of terrorists in the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda and helped foil a bomb plot, they say, but his work was cut short by Associated Press and newspaper reports."

US officials claim that this disclosure compromised the informant who had earned the trust of hardened terrorists:

Intelligence officials hoped to send him back to Yemen to help track more bomb makers and planners, but the leak made that impossible, and sent Al Qaeda scrambling to cover its tracks, officials said.

They ultimately found the guy who led to this lead, an ex-FBI agent, just a few weeks ago. His name is Donald Sachtleben. When you search Donald Sachtleben in Google News, it comes up with only 469 news stories, many of them involving someone else. Edwards Snowden has close to 200,000 news stories - all about him. There are 3700+ news stories listed of Snowden with the word "traitor" somewhere in the piece. There are no news stories with Sachtleben with the word "traitor."

To be clear, there are a difference between each of their actions: Snowden was deliberate in his disclosures and the actions of Sachtleben are still not entirely clear. But the impact of the Sachtleben leak was pretty terrible, yet has resulted in no condemnation in the media, and relatively minimal opprobrium from the legal system.

Sachtleben was ultimately sentenced 4 years for the leak and 8 years for two charges of child pornography. He got twice the time for child pornography than for giving up one of the most valuable sources in the war on terror.

As another example of real, demonstrable, harm to US national security, just in August, an Al-Qaeda and affiliates' "conference call" appears to have been infiltrated by the NSA. The call allegedly involved Zawahiri personally. Zawahiri called for action in several Muslim countries against US embassies and US interests in the region, which led the administration to take the drastic step of temporarily closing our embassies across the Middle East. The fact that the US knew of some plot was evident to the public since we closed our embassies, and the Administration likely decided that it was better to reveal that fact and take steps to protect ourselves than to try to prepare without showing our knowledge.

But surely the fact that US intelligence was listening to their scrambled conference calls did not need to be made public. In the intelligence community they refer to this type of detail as providing actionable information on "sources and methods." When that detail leaked, there were few calls for anyone to be arrested for leaking that detail, there was no discussion of who was a traitor, and yet we know that by that detail being published it compromised an extremely good source of intelligence.

Was the Snowden leak damaging to national security, or to political interests?

The New York Times recently found that according to their sources, the Snowden disclosures had minimal impact on how terrorists were communicating. Instead, the Times found that a leak by spy agencies themselves had caused much greater harm than anything disclosed by Snowden:

As the nation's spy agencies assess the fallout from disclosures about their surveillance programs, some government analysts and senior officials have made a startling finding: the impact of a leaked terrorist plot by Al Qaeda in August caused more immediate damage to American counterterrorism efforts than the thousands of classified documents disclosed by Edward Snowden.

Since news reports in early August revealed that the United States intercepted messages between Ayman al-Zawahri...analysts have detected a sharp drop in the terrorists' use of a major communications channel that the authorities were monitoring. Since August, senior American officials have been scrambling to find new ways to surveil the electronic messages and conversations of Al Qaeda's leaders and operatives.

In the case of leaking the information about the Al Qaeda conference call, there is no clear public policy reason that appears to justify this information being leaked and published (the source of the leak is still unknown).

For many Americans, the jury is still out on Edward Snowden. While the programs that were exposed are clearly of public importance, there are major questions as to why Snowden didn't go through the tools available to him to be a whistleblower before fleeing the country, whether he turned over classified documents to foreign intelligence, and to what extend the documents has he exposed have done more than provide information for public policy consideration but also may have compromised sources and methods or harmed US national security.

Americans are conflicted on whether Snowden is a whistleblower or something else, particularly given the recent evidence that he deliberately sought out employment with the public disclosure of confidential information as his apparent end goal. Some believe that seeking out the information to release makes Snowden a leaker versus a whistleblower. But clearly the fact that Snowden's disclosures were embarrassing for the intelligence community and the Administration has been part of why many were so quick to condemn him as a traitor. But before policy-makers call him a traitor, shouldn't they identify and prove the actual harm that was done by him?

Public Policy Implications

For leaks involving issues of public policy, the media is quick to narrow in on the personal details of the leaker, but the real question is, how does society react to the information itself? Americans can support or oppose Snowden's actions, but now that we know about Prism and warrantless surveillance by the NSA, the question is whether this is what we want to be done in our name.

Overall, there should be one standard across the board rather than treating unauthorized disclosures of classified materials through a political lens. We want more information on what is being done in our nation for national security, particularly when the actions of our military and intelligence community may violate the law or lead to potential blowback. But when disclosures cause serious harm to US national security then they should rightfully be condemned.

These examples of leaking seem to show a disturbing trend where policy-makers are quick to condemn leakers that present important public policy questions, but remain largely silent when leaks are more damaging to US national security and lack any public policy justification.

Derek Khanna (@DerekKhanna and Facebook.com/derekkhanna) is the maverick former Republican staffer and civil liberties advocate whose op-eds on cell phone unlocking went viral in January. He is now a Yale Law Fellow, columnist, and policy expert, and leader in the campaign to legalize unlocking your cell.

A lot of Americans don't want to know the truth about the government. There are many who still want America to be the most powerful place on earth at all costs.

More than ever we need whistleblowers to let us know what is going on behind the scenes. These people put their very lives at risk to let the rest of us know the truth about our government. We should be thankful to them.

If we could trust our government, there would be no need for whistleblowers. That said, I feel a definite need for a few of them. Of the people, by the people & FOR the people. What ever happened to that philosophy?

@drpeeper - The CIA disagrees with you... They believe that the Plame leak caused lots of harm... And we do not know what kind of covert operations she was engaged in... But when Plame (a NOC) was outed, so was her cover company. You should take a look at the relationship between Brewtser Jennings and ARAMCO.

@GenPatton - So when our government clearly breaches the 4th amendment, and Snowden informs the public he's a traitor? Really now. Seems to me you don't care about your rights. At least I care about your rights. I'll also defend them for you.

@kirbstomp1 Snowden and every other person who is entrusted with classified information signs a non-disclosure agreement and is instructed on the proper channels to utilize in reporting activities that are, in their eyes, illegal. Neither Snowden or Manning followed the procedures. Had they done the right thing I would be cheering them. I defended our rights for 22+ years in uniform and continue to serve this Great Nation. I don't think I need your assistance if you are willing to support law-breakers. Thanks anyway.

@GenPatton - just because something is a law doesn't make it right. Do we not have disclosure laws that the government doesn't follow properly. Im sorry, but I pay for this country to function and if im footing the bills I want to know what my money is going towards. hate to break it to you but im not going to pay for someone to spy on me, when they can even balances check book. Let's get real, I appreciate your service but being a government apologist, well quite frankly is sad. Regardless of what you may think you fought 22 years to make sure we maintain our rights, and now you calling people traitors that are trying to show the American Public that our government is trying to take our rights away that you have fought for. You may want to step back and reanalyze whose side you're on.

@kirbstomp1 What's sad is how ignorant and misguided you are when understanding how the govt works. As genpatton has said there is a path to "expose" the information, if you choose to on your own, meaning you think your individual position and knowledge is greater than the ones who deemed the information classified. This level of hubris should be paid for with severe penalties.

The funniest thing is that these programs were extended to the current levels under obama, and the blind continue to follow. Yeah we need to give these people more of our money.

I agree. Of course the Gov will try and brand someone a traitor who exposes their illegal and evil activities. Just like a bully in grade school who gets mad attacks someone for telling on them. They have this attitude like they're above the law and above accountability. It's audacious and wrong. Its not much different than how the mafia kills witnesses.

I find it interesting that we have apparently come a full circle. It was too long ago that a right wing site would not even have questioned what to do with military whitleblowers. Right wingers would have called for their head. What has changed? Black President maybe?

@alexpinca Blah blah blah........out comes the race card. It's so predictable. When Hillary Clinton is elected president we'll be hearing blah blah blah sexism for a minimum of four years. Once again predictable.

@HughAkston ---- You said a whole lot of nothing.....but right wing BS again and again and again. Weren't you right wingers the ones that use to praise the red, white and blue and call for anyone's head that would violate securitiy!!! Now we have a Black President and all that has changed...WHY?

@alexpinca Racist racist blah blah blah..........nobody really cares any longer. It's like the F-bomb, it lost all its shock value. Racism is something you say when you really have nothing else to say.

It depends on the perception of the masses. Manning and Snowden did, basically, the same thing. Manning revealed the duplicity and stupidity of diplomats and military but was condemned as a "traitor". Snowden made far more dangerous revelations regarding information gathering by the NSA and was branded a "hero". Manning revealed no dangerous secrets and is doing 35 years in prison. Snowden is still walking free. The comprehension of the masses is , to put it politely, "confusing".

Whistleblowers that show the people the crimes their country is committing are all heroes, regardless of the occasional harm to the real interests of the country, unless that harm can be proven intentional. The most recent cases of Manning and Snowden showed how criminal our country has been acting without actually disclosing any real Security information by Snowden, and possibly a tiny bit by Manning. I hope a future president gives Manning a full pardon.

They are traitors because they illegally released information that they were charged with protecting, they took an oath and they violated that oath. It does't matter whether or not that that information is unfavorable or not, if they felt that something was illegal or being covered up they had other legal options that wouldn't have put them in prison or on the run.

The extensive article above says it all. The Chicago Politician mindset is constantly at work and as always, is at its best people! Obama so enjoys all he's learned from them, for it makes him look so superior in any situation he's confronted with.

BSht. The government's warrentless spying program on millions of Americans is unconstitutional, overreaching, and is an attack on the rights of citizens. Snowden exposing it gave the opportunity for an accountability that is much needed in our government. If the government is doing wrong, the wrong should be exposed. Breaking the law is breaking the law..even if its the government who's doing it. ESPECIALLY if its the government who's doing it. Them trying to brand whistleblowers as traitors is no different than when a grade school bully attacks someone after class for telling on them. It's similar in character with how the mafia gets rid of witnesses.

Ok there is no such thing as Chelsea Manning, Bradley Manning on the other hand is a traitor plain and simple. He didnt expose the Govment illegally spying on Americans, he didn't expose Police brutality on U.S soil. He stole millions of documents and gave them to the terrorist.

The key point in my view is that in accepting the secret clearance you sign documents agreeing to the handling of classified information. They violated their oath and deserve to be put away forever. A number of the more severe leakers (not mentioned much in the media) end up being handled "under the radar", a practice I agree with. Snowden violated a pledge made to the US and should suffer severe punishment. I think the 35 years for manning is too light, as a member of the military the oath you swear is even greater than that of an individual with a clearance. In my opinion the word traitor is appropriate for both and they should endure the harshest punishment available.

It's not rocket science to discern the difference between whistleblower and traitor. The guy who revealed RJR's illegal coverup of their nicotine addiction research was a whistleblower. Why? Because RJR had no business deceiving anyone. They weren't in the spy business, and their activities ( KEEPING THE SECRET) killed millions of Americans. Snowden and Manning were traitors, because the agencies they worked for WERE in the spy business, these traitors knew that when they signed their non-disclosure contracts, and the RELEASE of their information put American lives at risk and most likely resulted in American casualties.

They are traitors, pure and simple! They are persons who took an oath and they violated it and they greatly damaged the United States! The U.S.A. is doing nothing different than the other industrialized nations. They all spy! If you don't, you're stupid.

Manning, Snowden, Allange, they are all despicable little men. Snowden and Manning SHOULD be executed as that used to be the punishment for treason before the bleeding hearts took over. Oh, and BTW, I'm a liberal Democrat!